Fed Should Study Higher Inflation Target, Liberal Economists Say
Fed Should Study Higher Inflation Target, Liberal Economists Say
A group of 22 progressive economists including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz urged the Federal Reserve to appoint...
A group of 22 progressive economists including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz urged the Federal Reserve to appoint a blue-ribbon commission to consider raising its 2 percent inflation target.
In a letter to Chair Janet Yellen and the rest of the Fed board released on Friday, the economists argued that a higher objective would give the central bank more room to combat downturns in the economy without unduly hurting Americans’ living standards.
Read the full article here.
How Janet Yellen Is Embracing The Fed’s Role In Racial Justice
How Janet Yellen Is Embracing The Fed’s Role In Racial Justice
Oh, what a difference a year can make. Last July, Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen endured criticism for House...
Oh, what a difference a year can make.
Last July, Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen endured criticism for House testimony in which she seemed to imply that there was little the Fed could do to address the disproportionately high African-American unemployment rate.
Not so on Tuesday. In her semi-annual testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen emphasized that the failure of the economic recovery to reach communities of color influences the Fed’s decision-making, and made a strong commitment to improving diversity at the central bank.
“Jobless rates have declined for all major demographic groups, including for African Americans and Hispanics,” Yellen said, according to her prepared remarks. “Despite these declines, however, it is troubling that unemployment rates for these minority groups remain higher than for the nation overall, and that the annual income of the median African-American household is still well below the median income of other U.S. households.”
Yellen’s policy argument has not fundamentally changed. It is the Fed’s job to maximize employment in the economy as the whole, she says, and it lacks the tools to target particular communities. And the Fed chief has clarified since last summer that she takes seriously how the Fed’s adjustment of interest rates can have an especially big impact on African Americans and Latinos, who have higher jobless rates.
But Yellen’s remarks and actions on Tuesday represent the Fed’s greatest demonstration yet that it is putting the concerns of communities of color front and center on its agenda.
The Fed Up campaign, a coalition of progressive groups that has led the push to make the Federal Reserve more responsive to workers in general, and communities of color in particular, was pleased with the focus of Yellen’s testimony.
“Each time since Yellen spoke last July, when she got pushback over what she said, she has gotten a little bit better,” said Jordan Haedtler, Fed Up’s campaign manager. “Now she is proactively showing that the Fed is assessing this data and does take this data into account.”
Diversity is an extremely important goal and I will do everything I can to further advance it.
This week’s hearings, held every six months in both chambers of Congress — the House will hold its hearing on Wednesday — are an opportunity for the Fed chair to update lawmakers about the overall state of the economy. As part of the briefing, the Fed releases an accompanying monetary policy report summarizing its economic assessment and research.
For the first time, the Fed chose to devote a section of its report to whether the “gains of the economic expansion [have] been widely shared.” That section focused on how the recovery affected different races and ethnicities differently.
The results are discouraging. Despite years of job growth, the rates of full-time work for African Americans and Latinos are a few percentage points lower than they were before the recession, while the rates among white and Asian-American workers have more or less reached pre-recession levels. And the median income of black households, which took the biggest hit of any group during the recession, has also been slower to recover, reaching only 88 percent of what it was in 2007, compared with about 94 percent for the other three groups.
Responding to a question about the new section from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Yellen insisted that weighing the disparate impact of economic growth on a range of different groups is a key part of the Fed’s mission.
“There are very significant differences in success in the labor market across demographic groups,” she said. “It is important for us to be aware of those differences and to focus on them as we think about monetary policy and the broader work that the Federal Reserve does in the area of community development and trying to make sure that financial services are widely available to those that need it, including low- and moderate-income [households].”
Yellen also recognized the importance of diversity — of race, gender, professional background and ideology — within the Fed’s ranks in ensuring the bank remains sensitive to a broad array of Americans’ economic experiences.
She touted her creation of a task force in the Fed to improve its gender and ethnic diversity, but acknowledged there is more to be done.
“Diversity is an extremely important goal and I will do everything I can to further advance it,” Yellen said.
Progressive groups and their allies in Congress trying to make the Fed more accountable to the public have focused on increasing diversity and reducing Wall Street’s influence at the central bank. Eleven senators, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and 116 House members sent a letter to Yellen on May 12 urging her to prioritize the diversity of Fed officials, especially at the 12 regional Fed banks, which are privately owned. (Hillary Clinton expressed similar sentiments in a statement later that day.)
The makeup of the regional Fed bank boards is important because they are dominated by the big banks and have free reign to appoint their presidents. The regional Fed bank presidents hold five seats on the Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank panel that adjusts the benchmark interest rate. Currently, regional Fed presidents make up half of the FOMC’s influential votes.
As a result, the Fed officials with the power to raise interest rates and effectively increase unemployment are selected by people who are disproportionately white, male and from the finance and business sectors.
In the interests of changing that, the Fed Up campaign on Monday released a slate of 39 candidates for the regional Federal Reserve bank boards of directors. The candidates not only reflect racial and gender diversity, but also come exclusively from academic institutions, community groups and labor organizations.
“On racial and gender diversity there has been modest progress, though it has not taken place at the rate we would like to see,” Haedtler said. Haedtler added that there is even greater room for improvement when it comes to the diversity of professional backgrounds of board members and other top Fed officials, an area where he said there has been “regression” under Yellen’s watch.
By Daniel Marans
Source
Voices: A middle ground in the immigration debate
MIAMI — Not that long ago, part of my morning routine involved catching up on what states around the country were doing...
MIAMI — Not that long ago, part of my morning routine involved catching up on what states around the country were doing that day to crack down on illegal immigration.
That habit started in 2010, when Arizona passed a law empowering state police to enforce immigration laws. One by one, other states started following suit. Utah. Indiana. South Carolina. Alabama wanted to check the immigration status of children enrolling in its public schools. Georgia was so successful driving undocumented immigrants out of the state that it turned to prison labor to harvest its abandoned crops, a plan that quickly failed once the prisoners started walking off the job.
Then, something changed. Those laws started getting struck down in courts. Others states halted their efforts to pass Arizona copycat bills. And before I knew it, I was drinking my morning glass of orange juice while reading through articles about local efforts to make life easier for undocumented immigrants.
The most interesting of those efforts has been a push to provide local identification cards to undocumented immigrants. The idea is simple: A city or county creates a "municipal ID" that those immigrants can use to interact with city officials, identify themselves to police officers and even open bank accounts so they're not easy, cash-carrying targets for would-be robbers. The IDs aren't substitutes for driver's licenses or federally-accepted forms of ID — for example, you can't get through security at an airport or board a flight with one.
The number of places approving those IDs has surged in recent months, with Hartford, Ct., Newark, N.J., Greensboro, N.C., and New York City approving them.
The wave of cities adopting municipal IDs doesn't mean the country has suddenly turned completely immigrant-friendly. Just tune in to the next Republican presidential debate to see how many candidates are proposing mass deportations, cutting down on legal immigration channels and missile-firing drone patrols along the southwest border. Or watch as states try to crack down on sanctuary city policies within their borders.
But what the cities adopting municipal IDs show is that there may be a middle ground in the immigration debate that has been so incredibly polarized in recent years. On the one side, we had states like Arizona passing laws to go after undocumented immigrants. On the other, we had cities and counties like San Francisco adopting "sanctuary city" policies that have allowed some undocumented immigrants with violent, criminal backgrounds to walk free.
The reason we've seen that pendulum swing so wildly in opposite directions is that Congress and the White House have been unable to come together and fix our nation's broken immigration system. That's why millions of undocumented immigrants continue pouring over our southwest border. That's why millions of legal immigrants can stay in the country long past the time their visas have expired. And that's why Americans can continue hiring those undocumented immigrants with little fear of punishment.
What's left is a system that has effectively allowed 11 million undocumented immigrants to stay in the country. And whoever you blame for that, they've been left in a legal limbo that makes life incredibly difficult for them.
Take Rosana Araújo, an Uruguayan who visited Miami on a three-month visa 13 years ago and never went back. Araújo has spent her years here cleaning houses, warehouses, day care centers, whatever she could do to get by. But the 47-year-old said the fact that her only form of identification is her Uruguayan passport has made her life difficult in so many ways.
She can't use a public library. She can't get past the security desk of local hospitals to visit sick relatives or friends. She said she couldn't even return a pair of pants atWalmart because they insisted on a Florida ID card.
Most important, Araújo said she didn't call police after she was sexually assaulted in 2009 because she had heard from other undocumented immigrants who had been victims of sexual violence that they were caught up in immigration proceedings after reporting the crime.
"The first thing they do is ask for your identification. And the passport for them isn't valid," she said. "That makes you far more vulnerable that the police are going to pick you up for not having identification."
Now Araújo is helping several groups push government agencies in Miami-Dade County to adopt the municipal IDs. The Center for Popular Democracy, a group that advocates for immigrant rights, estimates that two dozen other cities, including Phoenix, New Orleans and Milwaukee, are now considering adopting the program
Municipal IDs won't solve our nation's immigration problem. But they just might be the best short-term solution to ensure undocumented immigrants aren't completely helpless as we all wait for Washington to find a solution.
Allentown School Director, Others Rally for Education Funding Boost at Sen. Pat Browne's Office
The Express-Times - March 11. 2015, by Precious Petty - Pennsylvanians on Wednesday rallied in cites across the...
The Express-Times - March 11. 2015, by Precious Petty - Pennsylvanians on Wednesday rallied in cites across the commonwealth and urged state legislators to put people first.
A dozen Lehigh Valley residents gathered outside Sen. Pat Browne's West Hamilton Street office in Allentown. They chanted "Listen up, Pat Browne" and displayed signs printed with the message "We rise," sometimes drawing shouts or honks of support from passersby.
Keystone Progress organizer Nicole Matos led demonstrators as they called for an education funding boost, a higher minimum wage, equal pay for women and increased Medicaid spending. Similar rallies occurred all morning and afternoon in Jim Thorpe, Pittsburgh, York and five other Pennsylvania cities, she said.
Matos, of Stroudsburg, said too many of the state's elected officials are making decisions that advance corporate interests while exacerbating inequality, hurting low-income and minority families, damaging the environment and weakening the nation's democracy.
National Day of Action rally on March 11, 2015 A National Day of Action rally was held March 11, 2015, outside Sen. Pat Browne’s office in Allentown.
Allentown School Board member CeCe Gerlach said more than 1,300 students have dropped out of city schools over the last three years and inadequate education funding is contributing to the problem.
"They've dropped out, partly, because our class sizes have increased. They've dropped out because we don't have enough textbooks all the time. They've dropped out because the teachers aren't able to pay each student the amount of individual attention that they require," said Gerlach, who was among the demonstrators.
"They've dropped out because many of them need jobs because their families, who are working at minimum wage, can't afford to pay their rent."
She said Browne has gone to bat for Allentown schools before and she's hopeful he'll step to the plate again this budget season.
"He's come through for the Allentown School District in the past," Gerlach said. "I'm hopeful he'll come through for the Allentown School District now."
Keystone Progress in a news release said the organization staged rallies outside the offices of legislators whose recent actions undercut public education. Browne, along with other Republican Senate leaders, sent school superintendents a letter advising them not to count on getting the education funding that's part of Gov. Tom Wolf's budget proposal.
A staffer at Browne's office declined comment about the rally, which was timed to fall on the National Day of Action.
Keystone Progress joined with National People's Action, Center for Popular Democracy and USAction to mark the day and send the message that it's time for legislators to put people and the planet first, the release says. People in 23 states participated in rallies and other events.
Source
High-ranking Fed official resigns, reveals role in leaked confidential information
High-ranking Fed official resigns, reveals role in leaked confidential information
Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, resigned from his post effective Tuesday, after...
Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, resigned from his post effective Tuesday, after revealing he'd played a role in a leak of sensitive information to a financial analyst several years ago.
In a statement, Lacker said he spoke on Oct. 2, 2012, with an analyst at Medley Global Advisors, a macroeconomic research firm owned by the Financial Times Limited. The analyst asked about non-public policy decisions.
Read full article here.
Former Fed Adviser, Activists Lay Out a Plan for Change at the Fed
Former Fed Adviser, Activists Lay Out a Plan for Change at the Fed
A former Federal Reserve adviser is joining with an activist group to argue for overhauls at the central bank that they...
A former Federal Reserve adviser is joining with an activist group to argue for overhauls at the central bank that they say would distance it from Wall Street and make its activities more transparent and accountable to the public.
Dartmouth College economics professor Andrew Levin—special adviser to Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen between 2010 and 2012 when they were Fed chairman and vice chairwoman—is pressing for the overhaul with Fed Up coalition activists.
Dartmouth College economics professor Andrew Levin, special adviser to then Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke between 2010 to 2012, is pressing for the overhaul with Fed Up coalition activists. Many of the proposed changes target the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which are quasi-private and technically owned by commercial banks in their respective districts.
“A lot of people would be stunned to know” the extent to which the Federal Reserve is privately owned, Mr. Levin said. The Fed “should be a fully public institution just like every other central bank” in the developed world, he said in a conference call announcing the plan. He described his proposals as “sensible, pragmatic and nonpartisan.”
The former central bank staffer said he sees his ideas as designed to maintain the virtues the central bank already brings to the table. They aren’t targeted at changing how policy is conducted today. “What’s important here is that reform to the Federal Reserve can last for 100 years, not just the near term,” he said.
That said, what is being sought by Mr. Levin and the activists is significant and would require congressional action. Ady Barkan, who leads the Fed Up campaign, said the Fed’s current structure “is an embarrassment to America” and Fed leaders haven’t been “willing or able” to make changes.
A Federal Reserve spokesman declined to address the proposal.
Mr. Levin wants the 12 regional Fed banks to be brought fully into the government. He also wants the process of selecting new bank presidents—they are key regulators and contributors in setting interest-rate policy—opened up more fully to public input, as well as term limits for Fed officials.
Mr. Levin’s proposal was made in conjunction with the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up coalition, a group that has been pressuring the central bank for more accountability for some time. The left-leaning group has been critical of the structure of the regional banks, and has been pressing the Fed to hold off on raising rates in a bid to make sure the recovery is enjoyed not just by the wealthy, in their view.
The proposal was revealed on a conference call that also included a representative from Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, although all campaigns were invited to participate.
Mr. Levin says the members of the regional Fed bank boards of directors, the majority of whom are selected by the private banks with the approval of the Washington-based governors, should be chosen differently. The professor says director slots now reserved for financial professionals regulated by the Fed should be eliminated, and that directors who oversee and advise the regional banks should be selected in a public process involving the Washington governors and local elected officials. These directors also should better represent the diversity of the U.S.
Mr. Levin also wants formal public input into the selection of new bank presidents, with candidates’ names known publicly and a process that allows for public comment in a way that doesn’t now exist. The professor also wants all Fed officials to serve for single seven-year terms, which would give them the needed distance from the political process while eliminating situations where some policy makers stay at the bank for decades. Alan Greenspan, for example, was Fed chairman from 1987 to 2006.
With multiple vacancies in recent years, the selection of regional bank presidents has become a hot-button issue. Currently, the leaders of the New York, Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis Fed banks are helmed by men who formerly worked for or had close connections to investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Mr. Levin called for watchdog agency the Government Accountability Office to annually review and report on Fed operations, including the regional Fed banks. He also wants the regional Fed banks to be covered under the Freedom of Information Act. A regular annual review hopefully would insulate the effort from perceptions of political interference, Mr. Levin said.
By Michael S. Derby
Source
Trump’s Immigration Policy ‘Fever Dream’
Trump’s Immigration Policy ‘Fever Dream’
“The administration is “creating an environment of profound hostility,” as Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director...
“The administration is “creating an environment of profound hostility,” as Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director for the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), told me. (Archila was one of the women who passionately confronted Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator last week during the Senate hearing on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, shortly before the senator urged an FBI investigation into the sexual-assault allegations.) Together with Make the Road New York (MRNY), CPD published an alarming data brief estimating that if the administration were able to effectively implement its “zero-tolerance” policy—its attempt to prosecute all people who cross the border outside of a port of entry—the number of migrants in private detention centers would rocket from between 290 to 580 percent in the next two years.
Read the full article here.
Bill to offer state citizenship for undocumented immigrants
NY Daily News - June 16, 2014, by Erin Durkin - Undocumented immigrants in New York could become “state citizens” with...
NY Daily News - June 16, 2014, by Erin Durkin - Undocumented immigrants in New York could become “state citizens” with a slew of benefits from driver’s licenses under a new bill to be introduced Monday.
Advocates are set to announce a bill that would allow immigrants who aren’t U.S. citizens to become New York state citizens if they can prove they’ve lived and paid taxes in the state for three years and pledge to uphold New York laws, regardless of whether they’re in the country legally.
“The path to achieving opportunity and equity and dignity for immigrants through Washington seems blocked by Washington’s general dysfunction,” said Andrew Friedman, executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy and a founder of Make the Road New York. “States should push for full equality and inclusion.”
The bill will face long odds in Albany, where even more modest immigration reforms have failed to get through the legislature.
The bill would apply to about 2.7 million New Yorkers who lack citizenship, including those in the country legally and illegally.
People who secured state citizenship under the bill would be able to vote in state and local elections, and run for state office.
They could get a driver’s license, a professional license issued by the state, and Medicaid and other benefits controlled by the state.
Immigrants would also be eligible for in-state tuition and financial aid, and would be protected from discrimination based on their status. And the bill would sharply limit state authorities’ cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
The legislation would not grant legal authorization to work or change any other regulations governed by federal law.
It’s destined to be a longshot in Albany, where the DREAM Act, which would help undocumented students afford college, and efforts to offer driver’s licenses have failed so far.
But backers say it will prompt similar efforts in other states, similar to how states led the way on gay marriage, with talks on bills already underway in Illinois, Oregon, and Maryland.
“Obviously this is not something that’s going to pass immediately, but nothing as broad as this or as bold as this passes immediately,” said Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), the sponsor in the Senate.
The bill is estimated to cost taxpayers $106 to 173 million a year, while generating $145 million in new economic activity and saving drivers $100 million in insurance premiums, advocates say.
SourceLeadership at Fed’s regional banks is getting more diverse. But there’s still work to do, report argues.
Leadership at Fed’s regional banks is getting more diverse. But there’s still work to do, report argues.
“But diversity within the Federal Reserve’s regional banks hardly measures up, according to a new report compiled by...
“But diversity within the Federal Reserve’s regional banks hardly measures up, according to a new report compiled by Fed Up, a campaign of the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-leaning advocacy group. The report highlights the lag in gender, racial and occupational diversity among the presidents and boards of directors of the regional reserve banks. Researchers say this serves to further isolate already marginalized groups such as women and communities of color from monetary policy.”
Read the full article here.
The Real Threat to the Fed’s Independence Is Wall Street, Not Trump
The Real Threat to the Fed’s Independence Is Wall Street, Not Trump
“But the real threat to the Fed’s independence isn’t coming from Trump—it’s coming from Wall Street. The Fed’s...
“But the real threat to the Fed’s independence isn’t coming from Trump—it’s coming from Wall Street. The Fed’s structural flaws have led to regulatory capture, which compromises its ability to set monetary and regulatory policy in a manner that isn’t tilted to favor those at the very top of the economic ladder. Trump may have broken a norm by commenting on monetary policy, but the Fed’s status quo is unaccountable, opaque decision-making shaped by deep conflicts of interest with the very financial institutions the Fed is ostensibly supposed to supervise.
Read the full article here.
3 days ago
3 days ago